


Icebeast

by Slant



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bureaucracy, Croydon, Immigration & Emigration, London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6823882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the convergence, a beast from Jotunheim arrived in Greenwich. Now he must fill out immigration forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icebeast

He shuffles carefully into my office like someone who keeps knocking things over. Like, I dunno, he's in one of the little country pubs with the five-foot-six ceilings and the occasional beam that's even lower and the random floor heights. He isn't. He's in an 70s office block in Croydon. He squeezes himself into the visitor's chair - it creaks, but it always creaks. The desk doesn't wobble, but that's because I was in early six months ago when Frank retired and swiped his furniture.  
"So, Mr Icebeast, you understand the purpose of this interview is to establish your identity and any medical problems you have, as well as establishing the reasons for your asylum claim. MI13 have managed to source a translator. I turn to the shimmering semitransparent elderly gentleman sitting quite at ease in an equally insubstantial armchair that extends through the wall of the office.  
"Please handle your own introduction and explanation of interpretors etiquette."

As he grunts and snarls away in what I'm assured is flawless Joltem, I take a moment to look at my client. He is a whitish, wrinkly-skinned tusked quadruped roughly the size of a Mini. He arrived with the kilometres-tall alien vessel a couple of days ago. All immigration stories are unique, but his has certain practical difficulties which lead to legalistic problems. If he doesn't convince me that he faces prosecution if he returns home, then we are legally obliged to return him. Which, well, we can't just stick him on the next EasyJet flight to Joltemheim, can we? He can't apply for a visa while he's in the country. The rules say that he should be put in the detention centre until we can return him, but that means that when we _can_ return him, First Contact will have consisted of arbitrary detention of Joltemheim citizenry, and no-one wants that.  
Also, the Mayor's office would love to be able to boast about the difficulty of providing services for a diverse multi-planetary population at the meeting with the Americans next week. Especially since it's apparently their fault.

My best bet is probably to be generous when getting him to explain why he is afraid to go back to his own country- a fear of using earth's spacecraft or experimental space-warping physics for personal transport is pretty reasonable.

...

 

Week one: Interviews with Home office officials.

Week two: Voluntary interviews with security services. We stress the voluntary bit, but apparently the main problem is making him stop boasting for long enough to ask for specifics.

Week three: Horrifically well-paid interviews with the press. I set him up with some sensible agents. It works out pretty well.

Month six: he's just another face in the East End crowd. Greenwich's language census includes "Joltem".

Months eight - ten: a few meetings with various local martial arts clubs end with friendly disappointment. They can't work out anything to make their sparing interesting and balanced and acceptably safe. 

...

Five years later, he comes in for his permission to settle interview. In my office, the floor is creakier, the paint is flakier, the desk sags more; the computer on it is newer and sleeker, but still five years out of date. I've managed to book a bigger meeting room on the ground floor, so we don't have to worry about him cracking the stairwell. We've even got physical space for a corporal translator, if he still needed one. He runs a street-food stall now, mostly lichen and dried herring.


End file.
